Rebirth

The Tiananmen debacle resulted in a brief spell of conservatism, but within a few years, Deng Xiaoping choreographed the rebirth of reform and openness with his historic “southern tour.” With Deng’s assurance that “to get rich is glorious,” entrepreneurial energy exploded again, concentrated now in the coastal cities. The leadership, guided by economic czar Zhu Rongji, enacted a far-reaching structural transformation of the economic sphere, anchored in privatization of state-owned enterprises. Ironically, China’s lack of full reform—especially in the financial sector and monetary policy—protected the Chinese economy from the vicissitudes of hot money and capital flight that ravaged its neighbors during the East Asian financial crisis.

Deng Accepted That There Were Limits to His Expertise

Changing China's Market Framework

China's Opacity Protected it from Crisis

Entrepreneurship Was a Key to China's Boom

Charlene Barshefsky

Former US Trade Representative

Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky served as the US Trade Representative (USTR)—the chief trade negotiator and principal trade policymaker for the United States—from 1997 to 2001, and acting and deputy USTR from 1993 to 1996. As the USTR and a member of the President's Cabinet, she was responsible for the negotiation of hundreds of complex market access, regulatory and investment agreements with virtually every major country in the world.

Barshefsky is best known internationally as the architect and chief negotiator of China's historic WTO Agreement. She is recognized as a central figure for international business and international economic and trade issues. Barshefsky sits on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations and has also served as a director at a number of well-known multinational firms, including American Express, Estee Lauder, Intel, and Starwood Hotels. She has written and lectured extensively both in the US and abroad.

China was very lucky. And for me, there are two extraordinary figures. One was Deng Xiaoping, but the other was Zhu Rongji, who took China into the modern world in a way unthinkable ten years before he did it. Who had the sheer fortitude, the guts to press forward, to persuade within his own government, of that vision. It is that vision, unalloyed. Zhu Rongji did not have a vision as a political matter, he had a vision in a very different way, as a non-ideological, ultimately rational way. It is that kind of unalloyed vision, not politically directed, but directed in a manner best suited to the economic growth of the country, to the proper deployment of the nation’s resources, to the proper reform of entities that need to be reformed, to the use of wealth in a way to achieve initially rapid growth with job creation, and then spreading that growth in the country as best as possible. These things, in sort of hyper-form are still yet to come into being.